


Ephemera

by alcxhardy



Category: Mr. Robot (TV)
Genre: Angst, Drug Use, F/M, Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-17
Updated: 2018-12-17
Packaged: 2019-09-20 18:09:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 7
Words: 17,620
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17027526
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alcxhardy/pseuds/alcxhardy
Summary: Elliot meets the reader when she uses him for sex, but when she keeps coming back, he struggles with new found feelings and the simultaneous joy and hardships of human connection. (Elliot slowly falls in love with the reader, told through his own internal monologues.)





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Hi, all. After 3 years since its publication on Tumblr, I have decided to upload "Ephemera" onto AO3! Thank you all for the fantastic support this fic has received. Please don't hesitate to let me know what you think! Love to you all xx
> 
> If you need an alternate link, you can read it here:
> 
> https://alcxhardy.tumblr.com/post/138122403474/ephemera

I.

I barely remember the night we met. She was a little too drunk and I was feeling lonelier than usual. I don’t even think I knew her name at that point. She seemed to be an acquaintance of Angela’s which I thought was odd because she’d never mentioned her to me.  
She was unlike anyone I had ever met before; not boring, but not happy either. An unorthodox cocktail of melancholy fantasy and gritty realism masquerading itself in a human woman.  
I knew she was different the moment she pushed me down and undressed me with her own hands while she kept her eyes locked to mine.  
I didn’t speak to her; even when she left the next morning, we had barely shared a conversation.  
I was glad. I hate talking. Dodging around bigger things.   
I didn’t have to worry with her. She didn’t ask me questions I couldn’t answer. She didn’t even ask me my name.  
I barely know anything about her.  
At least until I get curious like I always do and want more, then I’ll know everything she doesn’t want me to. It’s an unusual kind of power, controlled in the technological sense through my computer screen.   
But her power was physical.  
She took what she wanted from me and I didn’t object. Then she left.  
I don’t know if I’ll see her again but that is one thing that I am not in control of.   
All I know is that her name is (Y/N).

*

She’s back again, exactly one week later. I don’t know why but as soon as I open my apartment door she walks straight in. She looks like she’d been out in the rain and she found the bathroom looking for a towel as soon as I opened the door for her.   
She still hasn’t said a word to me and I’m starting to feel like there’s something wrong.   
Who is she?   
I have to find out, but there’s something odd about her mystery as she uses the same trick as last time; this time we don’t make eye contact so I know it’s not personal.  
I know she doesn’t want me, that this facade is the root of a deeper evil, but I let her take her time; as much time as I can give her.   
I’m still trying to figure her out when it’s all over and she flops beside me, her body a fractured vehicle and my bed the pit stop.

She leaves in the morning without me prompting her, which is different, and I watch as she closes the door behind her with no more than a “bye” leaking from the corners of her bitten-up lips.

*

Her name is (Y/N) and she works for an investment company. She’s been the employee of the month four times in the past year.  
She has a Facebook and an Instagram but her only photo is from a holiday last year when she travelled to Cuba alone.  
She’s an only child, her father passed away three years ago and she owns a cat. She likes to open Wikipedia to a random article and read the whole thing when she’s bored and she takes Prazosin which makes me concerned. She’s trying to figure out who she is because she keeps on taking those dumb Buzzfeed quizzes but they’re fake, just like everything else except for her and I.  
She surprisingly has her webcam taped but I know she spent last night crying because she texted a friend saying that she didn’t feel well and then spent the next four hours browsing news articles and websites about crocheting. She seems to be popular online but she’s also hiding her suicidal thoughts in the form of research that a novelist might do about ways to die and how deadly each method is. Every word in her Google search is carefully constructed so as not to seem suspicious, but I know how to decode it.  
I’ve seen her school results too; she was a straight A student, never turned in a late project.  
She’s almost as white as the granules of morphine I can’t get enough of.   
She makes me uneasy.  
She seems like a good girl. She shouldn’t be mixing with people like me, but then again, perhaps I’m the one who’s involved myself with her.   
I have to be careful. If she finds out about me she won’t want to stay, and I have to admit, this time, I want to know more.

*

She’s here for the second time this week; “can we fuck?” escaping her lips once I open the door. I couldn’t help but stare at her but she seemed to be disgruntled that I didn’t answer. She pushed inside my apartment and I couldn’t find it in me to send her away. This has become almost routine now, her coming here and then leaving the next morning.  
Except tonight she’s different; our bodies collide not like shattering vehicles but like stars burning together, pulling each other in while moving in the same course.   
This time she looks at me and begs me to say her name. I don’t.  
She feels like empty bones beneath me, twisting until our flesh pulls away from our creaking skeletons, our bodies carrion as we rot into the damp earth of my mattress.

She doesn’t roll over immediately; instead she stares at me as I sit, and her eyes are uneasy, flicking to and from my face.   
She jams her thumb in the groove of my clavicle and I flinch; she laughs as she pulls away and slides her thumb into her mouth. Pain shoots through my neck as I rub where she’s dug her finger in, left her mark in the form of a deep red blotch.

“Why don’t you speak?” She rasps. 

Why should I answer? Who is she to me? But instead I open my mouth and “what do you want me to say to you?” falls out, a frown painting my expression.   
She shakes her head and shuffles closer and for a moment I’m worried that she’ll touch me again. Instead she reaches over me and grabs my cigarette packet from my bedside table, her hair brushing my chest as I freeze. Then she’s sitting beside me lighting up and twirling my cigarette in her fingers, and I’m breathing in the smoke thinking maybe this will be the gulp that kills me.

*

She’s snoring, painful muffles and harsh breathing. Like usual, I’m stuck staring at my ceiling with my brain blanking. I should be used to her sleeping beside me by now but the truth is that I’m starting to be scared by the routine we’re seemingly falling into; domesticity makes me uneasy - the unspoken expectations that seem to come with them. Soon she’ll be expecting me to make her breakfast. I’m not that kind of person.   
I roll over but in the dim light something catches my attention; on her back there are jagged white scars. They look deep. They crisscross from her shoulder blades down to her lower back. This sets my mind into a frenzy like when I see something that I know isn’t right. Surely these couldn’t be from an accident? I can tell the wounds were deep because the scars are thick and messy. Nothing about this came up when I hacked her; but maybe I’m looking in the wrong place. But how do you ask someone about their past when you don’t want them to know yours?

*

This time she brought food. Chinese takeout. This is bad. This means she wants more than what we have already. Whatever it is we have.

“(Y/N) -”

“Don’t protest, just eat it with me,” she says. She spills her noodles on my mattress. I don’t mind so much. It’s just another stain. I sit with her and we eat together.   
She tells me about her interest in horticulture. I pretend to give a shit.   
I fumble with the zipper of my hoodie as she talks and talks. She’s obviously not shy anymore. I don’t understand; what does she want from me? I glance at the door and she notices. 

“It’s Elliot, right?” She snaps.

“What?” I stare at her and we lock eyes. Real human contact. Her irises are crushed granules of slate and behind them there’s something else. I didn’t think she knew my name, but then again, she’s proving she still has that power I mentioned before. 

I’ll never get used to this.

*

She didn’t turn up today. I don’t know why, or why not. I have no way of contacting her. Maybe she’s decided to move on from me.  
Maybe she won’t come back. Sometimes that’s just the way it is. Still, I have an odd feeling: The Prazosin, the scars on her back, the way she always seems sad whenever I see her.   
I can’t allow myself to worry about her; I have enough to be apprehensive about already and she’s not my problem, not really. Still, there’s a strange feeling tugging at me as I wait for her and there’s no knock. 

There’s an unusual emptiness I didn’t think I’d experience as I stare at my ceiling again; I have to admit my loneliness is lesser when (Y/N) is here and even though I would never tell her, I like being close to her.   
It makes me feel somewhat normal - if you’d believe that - if only for an instant. 

Is this what it’s like to have a normal life? To take comfort in another person’s body against yours and then exhale when they leave you with the promise of next time painted on their face? Maybe I’ll never know. I’m not normal, and neither is she. Maybe we’re not meant to be.

*

She comes the next day, and this time I ask her where she’s been and she doesn’t tell me. She’s translucent. She’s numb. I don’t know how to help her. I tense as she wraps her arms around me; she smells like cinnamon and cigarettes and the soap that she’s been trying to scrub her sins off with. Her breathing is harsh and I can tell she doesn’t want to talk; she waits for me on my bed and there’s a tugging at my chest - is it cruel of me to do this? Does she really want it, or is it just a momentary distraction for something worse? Always.  
She presses her lips against my neck and I let her, even though my skin is crawling as my brain screams at me not to let her touch me. She notices my shaking hands and holds them, pulls them under her shirt. Her stomach is warm, and her lips are hungry as she trails her mouth from my earlobe down across my collarbones.   
I can feel the heat pooling in my stomach again as I close my eyes and she reaches for what she wants, and takes it. 

We lie awake. I know she knows. She’s not facing me but I can hear her heart pumping blood around her hollow frame. She rolls over and faces me. There’s a distance between us, even now. I turn my head and she’s looking right at me. Her lips are bloodstained; marks that match the red and purple blotches on my body. She takes my hand and I don’t say anything; her thumb rubs my palm and shivers jolt down my spine as I hope I don’t react. 

“Why do you let me in?” She whispers, and I frown.

“Why do you keep coming?”

She moves closer hesitantly, until she nestles into the groove between my armpit and chest. My heart speeds up as she snuggles closer and rests there, in the dark. She expects me to wrap my arm around her but I don’t. I let her lay there, against me, our chests rising and falling together as her eyelids droop. 

In the morning, she’s still asleep. My sheets are tangled around her body and I feel explicitly weary. I’ve been struck by a meteor and she’s it. I pull on my clothes and stare at her limp body as I leave her to sleep; I can’t be late for work and leaving provides me with an excuse not to talk to her.

*

She’s still in my apartment when I get home. This is new.   
I should ask her to leave but I’m curious as to what she wants.   
She pats the bed and starts talking about something; I’m not paying attention but her voice is a soothing rumble, comforting white noise while my brain whirls out of focus. 

“Why me?” I ask her suddenly, and she frowns. Her pause tells me everything I need to know.

“Because you were different,” she murmurs. “Because you were wearing that -” she gestures at my hoodie “- at a party and I wanted to know what was underneath it." 

She fiddles. She’s nervous. I’m tired. She reaches for my cigarettes again and I catch her wrist in my hand.

"You can’t stay here,” I tell her.

Yet again, she doesn’t seem to care. She flops back onto my bed and stares at the ceiling. How can she be just like me?   
I bite my lips but I carry on with my normal routine, ignoring her while she pouts at me.   
I don’t care.   
I see her backpack on the floor at the end of my bed; I reach for it and she cries out to stop me. My fingers pull out my bottle of morphine.  
I hold it up and wiggle it, raising my eyebrows. She turns away.   
“I just wanted to try it.”

I look down. There’s an easier solution.

She laughs as she snorts up the remnants of my trail, sniffing in as her hair flops into her face. I reach up and wipe the powder left under her nose, rub it between my fingers. (Y/N) looks at me and wipes her hair out of her face, crawls over to me slowly as I finish the rest of the morphine.  
She bumps our noses together and breathes in; I lean forward and press my lips against hers, my heart pounding.   
Maybe this is the morphine overriding my free will, purging my system and forcing me to be affectionate, but whether it is or not I like the sensation of her tongue against mine as she lets me be in control this time. It’s easy to lose myself in the moment.   
I have to be cautious, but it seems so fulfilling to kiss her over and over, our lips interlocked as she parts her mouth and moans for me.  
This isn’t domesticity.  
This is something else entirely.  
This makes me feel more scared than I’ve ever been but I bury the feeling deep down to the bottom of my chest as we slot together like puzzle pieces and ride the heatwave of our nerves in unison.   
This time she looks at me but doesn’t ask me to say her name. I do.

*

“What do you do for a living?” She murmurs through gritted teeth.   
My brain fizzles. Is this what we’re up to now? Does she expect us to have normal conversations? To find out about each other? It’s easier not knowing. It makes it more simple to leave, less messy.

“I work in tech,” escapes my lips.

“Do you like it?" 

I shrug. It has its ups and downs, like everything. 

"Why work there if you don’t like it?” She laughs.   
She thinks it’s that simple, that we all have a choice about where we’re employed, what job we do. She takes my silence as an indicator that I don’t want to discuss it with her. 

“You’re probably really good at your job,” (Y/N) murmurs, and I gaze at her.   
Her tone seems genuine, and she offers me a smile as my eyes linger. 

“Don’t you want to know what I do?” She coos.

I already know. This conversation should be avoided but I know how it works. I have to pretend I know nothing about her and then pretend I can’t see past her half-truths as she slowly reveals information I’m aware of.   
She drums her fingers on my knee and leans closer.   
I turn to face her. “What do you do?” I hum.

She tells me about her job, about how she’s the youngest person to be in her position and how proud she is that she’s been employee of the month four times within the past year. She talks about her colleagues and how great they are and I wonder why she doesn’t seem to be close to anyone.

“Are you listening?” (Y/N) whispers. 

My eyes meet hers and for the first time, I have been. I’ve been paying attention to everything she’s been saying, so much so that her voice is still in my head as her eyes scour my face for clues as to my demeanour.   
I nod and she presses her forehead against mine.

“Why are we doing this?” I murmur, and she shushes me. 

“Just let me sit here with you like this,” her breath comes out as a whisper, and her eyes are closed as she hangs there, our bodies connected. 

She stays the whole day, watching videos on my computer and laughing, distracted as I save her number into my phone and then delete her recent calls.   
She orders pizza and lays on my lounge shoving piece after piece into her mouth as she hums the tune to her favourite song that I can’t place. 

Later, she joins me in bed and snuggles against me. We don’t have sex this time.   
She presses her lips against my chest and rests her chin on my flesh.  
I don’t look at her. I can’t. I’m worried I’ll find something I don’t want to see. Some hope for me, for us or this, even.  
She talks to me gently and two hours later we’re both sitting up engaged in conversation.  
This is the most I’ve ever said to her but it feels refreshing. I place my words carefully, hear them bouncing off her empty carcass.

After I turn the lights off (Y/N) takes my hand and slides it to her scars, lets me press my palm against the healed gashes.

“My daddy did this,” she chokes, and I can see the tears welling in her eyes, can hear it in her voice.

“Why are you telling me?” I croak.   
Abuse is a funny thing. Of all the different methods, ways to hurt someone, none of them are less numbing or easy to forget once your scars become emotional rather than physical, and you’re forced to plunge your contempt deep down inside yourself and bury it with your shaking hands. 

“Because you’re the only person that listens to me, Elliot.”

She’s used my name again. She feels for me. My heart skips a beat. I feel relieved, enlightened. I feel cold and burdened and uncomfortable. I let my hand brush over her back, feel the ridges of textured flesh and the way (Y/N)’s breath catches in her throat as my fingers rub gently. 

Her father did this to her. The same father who died three years ago. He can’t hurt her anymore.

“Why did he do it?” I can’t help but ask. I couldn’t find a trace of this and I’m curious.  
I know I shouldn’t dig, but I’ve never been the best at face-to-face communication.

(Y/N) presses her face into my ribcage, her hands shaking gently as her hot tears make contact with my skin. I reach out and slide my hands through her hair, the way I used to do when Darlene was crying and I didn’t know what else to do.   
She looks up at me and her face is twisted into an animalistic scowl; she looks like my nightmares, the ones in which I’m eaten alive by beasts I know but cannot name, and I’m ready for her jaws to devour me.  
Instead she hums softly, a human paradox, and murmurs “he liked to twist the wings off flies and sometimes he couldn’t catch the flies but at least they can fly." 

She’s not making sense now; yet somehow I understand her. How limiting legs are - if only to fly away from everything. Except loneliness and guilt and sorrow would follow anywhere you went. And that’s why her and I can’t fly. We’re stuck on the ground in the crude reality we’ve been forced into, sole survivors of brutal carnage who’ve found each other and lapped up leakage of strength. We’re villains, feeding off each other’s sullen power - hers physical, abuse trapped on her skin, stuck behind her body; mine emotional, caged in my mind, slowly filling until it overflows and drowns me alone.   
She lays on top of me and her body is a deadweight; I hear only our hearts pounding together until the blackness envelopes us and we plummet into the whirlwind of unconsciousness.

*


	2. Chapter 2

II.

(Y/N) has become the dirt under my fingernails that I can’t scrape out. She’s attached herself to me and no matter how hard I try I can’t remove her. It’s an unusual sensation; today I thought about her at work, so much so that I didn’t meet a deadline and had to stay back later to complete it.   
My work ethic is slipping because suddenly my job seems more draining than usual - almost as if every time I go I am emptied, and every time I see her I am refilled.  
Stupid, I know, but there’s no other way to describe it. She’s unaware of my feelings and I hope it stays that way.  
To be honest, I don’t want her to know.  
I’ve never been good at dealing with my emotions and definitely not in scenarios like this; nobody ever sticks around long and I can’t help but feel that she’ll be the same.  
Darlene and Angela are the only two women who have ever been constant in my life, but they’re not like me.  
(Y/N) is like me. It’s terrifying.  
How can one soul occupy two bodies?   
Is that even possible?   
Too many questions. Too many complications. All I know is that (Y/N) is - dare I say it - special, and I don’t know what that means.

 

"Do you ever think about the future?” She laughs as we lay on my bed together. 

I shake my head. I try not to. I try not to think of possibilities that I know will never happen. Life is easier when you’re not thinking about anything.

“Sometimes I wonder how I’ll die,” (Y/N) exclaims, almost as if she’s excited to find out which way she’ll go.   
I couldn’t care less. As long as death is quiet and quick, I’m not fussed. Nobody will remember me in ten, twenty years, so there’s no need for my death to be extravagant or hyped up. 

“Aren’t funerals fucked up?” I whisper and (Y/N) stares at me.

“What?” She laughs. “Funerals?”

“Think about it,” I try to convince her. “Nobody cares once you die, but everyone who didn’t care while you lived turns up. That’s pretty fucked up.”

She nods, eyes darting upwards as if she’s trying to process what I said. “Yeah,” she decides. “Funerals are pretty fucked up.”

I breathe out the smoke of my cigarette and (Y/N) cranes her neck to inhale. Maybe we’ll both die of nicotine poisoning. 

(Y/N) tells me her favourite band and I laugh, for what feels like the first time in a long time. I hate that band. It seems only fitting that she’d like them. She starts humming a song and eventually she’s towering above me singing at the top of her lungs while I block my ears and laugh.  
If only for a moment this is a reality I could allow myself to indulge in; in an alternate universe maybe this is what it’s like every day: where we wake up together and are happy.   
(Y/N)’s tongue finds the dip of my diaphragm and our warm affection is automatically traded for the familiar rhythm of sex, my hands finding her hair as her lips creep down my body.   
My head falls back onto my pillow and my breath hitches in my throat as her mouth paints wounds into my swollen skin; we are a car crash and I am a mess of hot blood and burning asphalt and shattering glass as my fractured exclamation echoes against the walls. (Y/N) swallows the carnage and drags her body off the road unharmed. 

*

Today is Valentine’s Day.   
I never pay attention. It’s just another day of commercialised bullshit masquerading as a romantic reason to spend money on gifts nobody will use.   
I should’ve paid attention this time.  
(Y/N) is sitting on my bed stuffing her mouth with chocolate after chocolate.

“I can’t believe you didn’t get me anything,” she whinges, throwing her wrappers on my floor. 

Was I meant to? She’s not my girlfriend, after all. Is she? Can we count our interactions as a relationship?

(Y/N) scowls at me as I sit beside her. She holds a chocolate up to my lips and pulls away before I can move.   
The silver wrapper catches the light from my window and blinds me.   
This is it; punishment for my lack of efforts.  
(Y/N) unwraps the chocolate and pushes it into my mouth.  
It’s awful - the generic brand shop chocolate that’s never well-made but it’s popular because it’s cheap. Still, I eat it to appease her. She passes me another one and another one until my stomach sinks, and I’m filling myself up with sickly indulgences.  
She doesn’t say anything as she pulls her shirt off and clambers onto my lap.  
My head spins as I try to make sense of what to focus on; my chewing or her rocking gently back and forth against my crotch as her lips linger near mine. The denim tightens against me as I choke back nausea and close my eyes, focus on (Y/N): she’s got my attention, in more ways than one.  
Her breath reeks of cocoa and I know mine does too and I wonder if things would be different right now if I had’ve indulged her with a gift. Her fingers make light work of my jeans and yet again she uses that power only she has, to get the better of me.   
(Y/N) hides her contempt for my attitude well on the surface but her feelings manifest themselves in her sudden, jolted movements and uninhibited grunts.   
My fingers dig into her hips to steady her but instead it’s me who’s holding on, gripping as if I’ll lose her, staining her skin battered purple. She presses her face into my neck as sweat beads on the back of my neck. She grasps for my hood and clenches her fists into the fabric, so tightly I’m worried she might tear it off.   
My mouth falls open and now she kisses me, our foreheads bashing together as my hips twitch and buck upwards, and my name falls catastrophically off her tongue, almost choked back by her simultaneous gasps. White light tugs at the corners of my vision and I wonder why I ever need morphine when this is just as much of a high; (Y/N) pushes faster, knowing her pleasure is almost at its expiration, and all of a sudden my brain blanks and I’m not in control of my mouth and the sounds that spill out as my fingers dig harder to keep her still while I am emptied.   
That power she has kicks in and she fights against my grip, her movements slowing, riding out my release until she meets her own, her arms snaking around my neck and her exclamation engulfs us, a choral reverence.   
I cup her jaw with my hands and we fall back against the mattress, lingering against each other. We are messy, leaking vessels and now we’ve become a unit, her spilling out and I overflowing until we drown in our own undoing.

I wake to gentle sobs, coming from (Y/N). She’s pressed against the edge of my bed, my blanket pulled tightly around her shoulders.   
I move to touch her but realise she may think I’m asleep.   
What am I supposed to do in a situation like this? I don’t want to see her upset but I’m not sure I’m meant to be privy to this. Hesitantly, I touch her shoulder and she freezes.

“Elliot,” she whispers, almost as if she’s comforted, and I press my hand against her back.   
She slides backwards and bumps against my chest, pulls my arm over her and takes my hand in hers. She spreads my fingers and runs hers over them. Human connection. It’s a funny thing. Some things I will never understand.  
She holds my fingers up to her mouth and kisses them, her breath jagged.   
What do I say? Is my presence enough?  
I rest my chin in the groove of her shoulder-blade and (Y/N) shifts back further, until her back is pressed against my chest and I’m leaning into the curve of her body.  
Once our fingers untangle I slide my hand away and rest it on her stomach, hold her against me gently. (Y/N)’s body shakes as she sobs again, and I close my eyes and test my chances as I press a kiss to her hair.  
(Y/N) whimpers, and “I don’t want you to see me like this,” escapes her lips.

I have nothing to say. Instead, I rub her arm gently, coax her to turn with my movements.   
Eventually it works.  
(Y/N) shifts gently, then rolls over and faces me. Her eyes are muddy pools and I am compelled to reach up and brush her tears away with my thumb. 

“What can I do?” I choke. “Tell me what to do.” I don’t like to see her in pain; it hurts. It makes me feel powerless. I stroke her cheek as my brow furrows.

“Elliot,” she murmurs, “hold me?" 

I pull (Y/N) close and her face presses against my chest. She shifts in towards me and my arms find their way around her. She is cold. I pull the blankets up around her shoulders and rub her back to induce warmth. Her palm presses against my flesh, her thumb scraping my nipple. I rest my chin on her hair and cradle her as her breathing evens out. I wonder if she’ll tell me what’s wrong. I wouldn’t mind listening.   
A chill creeps over my shoulders but I brush it away as (Y/N)’s eyelashes flick against my chest, her tears caking on her face.  
I know what comes next.   
Moments like these I’m expected to tell her it will be okay because I love her, but that’s no comfort to me.   
I hope that my silence is enough, and it seems to be as she exhales and falls asleep with my arms still wrapped around her.

In the morning I wake with (Y/N) snuggled into my side, one arm draped on top of her face, the other dangling over my torso.   
What day is it? What time is it?  
It’s a weekend.   
I pull the covers over us and let weariness re-take me.

When I awake again, (Y/N)’s fingers are drawing swirls over my stomach, twisting themselves in organic shapes from my diaphragm down to the dip above my crotch.  
I blink and (Y/N) is staring down at me, her lips drawn into a tight grin. I think this is the first time I’ve seen her smile; really smile. Her hair falls in a tangle on her left shoulder and her eyes meet mine.   
I sit up, and she crawls to meet me.   
This time I use my power. I take her chin and pull her mouth onto mine, and my heart flutters. What have we become?   
(Y/N) laughs between her teeth as she lets me kiss her; there is some small, unknown glory in sharing morning breath and naked embraces, and I realise that this is something I’ve never experienced - the joy of first times and the terror of maybes.  
My head swirls as her lips crash against mine, until finally we stop and I find myself caressing her cheek.

"Who am I?” I murmur, as if she knows the answer I don’t. The question I’ve never been able to find a solution for.

She rubs my cheek with her thumb.   
“Who do you wanna be?”

“I don’t know,” I answer, and she takes my hands and holds them.

“That’s okay,” (Y/N) smiles. “We’re all trying to figure it out, same as you.”

For maybe the first time ever, I allow myself to believe it. It’s not the solution I need, but it is one I can have right now. Who am I? Who was I before (Y/N)? What will I be without her?


	3. Chapter 3

III.

The closest florist to Allsafe is forty minutes in the other direction. It will make me approximately ninety four minutes late home on the train in the dark. Still, I go after my shift and look for the biggest bunch of flowers I can find.  
I think this is what people are meant to do if they miss Valentine’s Day.   
There’s a bouquet of orange blooms, and one of pinks, violets, white ones.  
I have no idea what I should get, what (Y/N) would like. Hell, I don’t even know if she likes flowers.   
I pick up the bunch closest to me; it takes my whole hand to clench around the bound stems - the flowers are a mixture of small white blossoms and large pink blooms. They smell nice and I hope she will like them. 

The woman at the counter stares at me like I’m not human. I’m used to it. She tells me the total and I pay without speaking.   
Flowers are another overpriced commodity. I should be surprised but I’m not.   
I take my purchase and leave her shitty opinion of me behind. 

I worry that the flowers will droop on the train but they seem to be fine. I have to hold them in between my legs as I unlock my apartment door and close it behind me, wait for (Y/N) to be here.

She comes almost two hours later; its 9:42 pm and she’s had a rough day. I can tell. She’s twitchy. Plus she texted her friend Amy that her boss was an asshole so that may be the reason for her fizzling anger.

“Hi,” I say as she shuts my apartment door and pulls her coat off, dumps her bag on the chair near my computer. 

She stares at me. “Hi Elliot,” her lips are pursed. She doesn’t seem happy to see me. Why is she here if she doesn’t want to be? I blink carefully and hold the flowers out to her.

“I’m sorry I didn’t get you anything,” falls from my lips. “I’ll try harder.”

(Y/N) stares at the bouquet and my stomach sinks. She looks like she’s about to bat it out of my hands. Instead she jolts towards me and buries her nose in the blooms, inhaling deeply.   
When she looks up, she sighs.

“Thanks, Elliot,” she kisses my forehead, and I put the bouquet down on the sink. 

“Are you alright?” I try.

(Y/N) purses her lips. “Yeah, I just… It was just a shit day, you know?” She hugs me softly and I wrap my arms around her.  
She slides the zipper of my hoodie down, and she’s shaking as we share a hesitant kiss. She’s only here because she thinks I expect sex. That we’re still only here because of our unspoken agreement. I should’ve been anticipating this, but to be honest, it comes as a blow. This is her opinion of me.

My hands clutch her wrists and our eyes meet. “Go home,” I whisper.

“Where?” Her bottom lip quivers. “That empty apartment? What about you?”

“(Y/N), I…” What do I say? Do I explain this? “I don’t want to hurt you. You don’t have to do this." 

"You don’t want me?” She shakes her head.

She’s taken it the wrong way. What do I do?

I take her hand, lead her to my bed. She frowns as I crouch behind her, until my hands squeeze her shoulders and make their way across her back and against her neck.  
This is the only way I know how to help. (Y/N) moans as her tension releases, letting me massage her gently.   
She leans into my touch; this makes me feel better.   
My fingers find the stray strands of hair and push them behind her ears.  
(Y/N) turns and kisses me gently; she is loose nerves now. 

“Can I stay here tonight?” She whispers.

I nod, and (Y/N) offers a weak smile. 

She takes a bath, and gradually her humming gets louder as the stress of today washes off, replaced with bubbles from the bubble bath I had in the back of my cupboard.  
“Come in with me,” she orders.

I shake my head. She opens her arms and bubbles fill the gaps between the empty water and her skin. No. 

“Are you scared?” She purrs. I shake my head. I’m not scared. My bath is too small for both of us. The truth is I’m uncomfortable with sitting in a body of water, watching my skin wrinkle. It would be too easy to drown there. I sit beside the bath and she scoops bubbles with her hand and puts them on my hair.

This makes me laugh; makes me think of my early childhood, when Darlene and I used to finger paint and play with mud until our clothes were dirty, when we shared bubble baths and covered our faces with the bubbles, and sat on the lounge together with blankets draped over us while we watched reruns of old cartoons that nobody knows about now.   
Existing had been simpler back then; before everything else happened. Before life happened. I wonder if Darlene’s memories of us are as fond as mine?

I flinch at (Y/N)’s hand touching my cheek. “What are you thinking about?” She whispers, and I blink. 

“My childhood,” is my response, and (Y/N) smiles back, pressing her index finger against my nose. She scoops up more bubbles and blows them in my direction. I bat them away and we are like children again.

(Y/N) has no pyjamas so instead she slides my boxer shorts on. A strange sight, but they seem to suit her. She lays on my bed and Flipper joins her, and she tells me about her friend Amy and how they met. I lay beside her and we stare at the ceiling together.

“Do you have any friends?” She whispers. 

An interesting question. Do people consider me their friend? I hope not. I’ll end up disappointing like I always do. I only have Angela, but (Y/N) should know that because they’ve met before.   
Instead I shake my head. 

“Do you have any siblings?” She murmurs.

“A sister.” I blink, before I realise I should elaborate. “Her name’s Darlene.”

(Y/N) doesn’t ask too much, and I ask her about the small details of her life.

She tells me this:

Her favourite colour is yellow because it reminds her of the sun, she named her cat “Fidget”, she’s wanted to get a tattoo since she was thirteen but can’t decide on which design to get, her Prazosin is for the PTSD she has from her father, her least favourite Shakespeare play is Hamlet, the only Star Wars movie she hasn’t seen is Episode V and she keeps her first pair of socks in a drawer by her bed.   
These are things I didn’t know about her; things I can’t hack. Perhaps this is her source code. 

I feel closer to her after I have learned these snippets of her life; I don’t know why. I don’t usually care, but maybe this makes me feel like I can relate. She is human like I am and so I reach out and take her hand, hold it, for myself.   
Our fingers entwine and we lay there, for what seems like forever, until she rolls over and presses her lips against mine. 

“I’m going to teach you how to braid hair,” she exclaims, pulling me up and sitting in between my legs.   
She takes my hands from behind and instructs me, and directs me with her words as her hair slides between my fingers and I create a braid down her neck. I laugh when I drop the strands and (Y/N) stammers “try again,” over and over.   
The braid is lopsided but I did it.  
I did it.   
(Y/N) runs her hand over the braid and smiles. She pulls me into a hug gently and I wrap my arms around her slowly. 

Then I’m sitting on my bed as (Y/N) dances around my apartment in my underwear, screeching wildly to the most generic pop songs I’ve ever heard, and my laughter makes my stomach churn. She almost trips over her own feet four times; not a graceful creature, but a free one, at least.

We sit cross legged on the floor as she forces me to get a temporary tattoo that she had a pack of in her bag.   
My protests are to no avail as she applies the damp cloth to my foot, leaving a pink butterfly on my cuboid. 

“Roll over,” she dares me. I meet her eyes. She’s up to something; and I can’t let her win. She knows too much already.  
(Y/N) smiles, a smile which flashes her teeth, as she pushes me down onto my stomach and tugs my jeans down.

“No!” I gasp. I almost choke on my laughs as she positions the tattoo on my right cheek and smoothes the cloth over my exposed flesh. It is horrifically uncomfortable and I can feel the water sliding off my skin and dampening my jeans.

“Stop wriggling!” She growls, “or you’ll have blotches on your arse not stars!" 

This makes it: stars. How typical. A smile tugs at my lips as (Y/N) blows the tattoo dry and prods her handiwork.

"Alright, your turn,” and I mean it. I pick a flower tattoo and grab the cloth. I’ve never done this before. Maybe this is an element of childhood I missed. Maybe I’ll never know what I’ve missed until I try it.

(Y/N) sits on her calves. “Where are you gonna put it, then?” She coos.   
She lays on her back and lifts her shirt, revealing the expanse of stomach.   
My eyes linger but my fingers find the corners of my boxers and slide them down her hips.  
I press the tattoo just above her crotch, in the dip below her stomach. She laughs, a deep cackle. The water from the cloth drips down her thighs and she curses.   
My fingers hold the cloth down until the tattoo is stuck. It’s amusing, the flower tattoo just above her tangle of hairs, a speckle of colour on her skin. My lips press against it and (Y/N) exhales loudly. 

She pulls a flower out from the bouquet and tucks it behind my ear. It sits there comfortably, and (Y/N) pulls out her phone and snaps a photo before I can refuse.   
To be honest, I hate photos. Embarrassing memories contained forever in the technological, easily shared and spread. I know, my opinion is dull and boring, but I’d rather not remember myself in certain situations. Especially not adorning myself with flowers. But (Y/N) doesn’t seem to care. She zooms in and holds up her phone for me to see. I look ridiculous, out of place. I wonder if this is what I look like during everyday life. 

“You’re beautiful, a garden child,” she says confidently, as if she genuinely believes I live amongst the trees. Wonderful.

I take the flower in between my fingers and run it over her bare skin. Where on her body will the petals elicit a reaction? (Y/N) is silent throughout our interaction, and now she intrigues me. 

I have so many questions I want answers for, so much more I want to know. About her, about myself, about what we’re doing and who we’re meant to be.  
I have nothing to say and my silence confuses me. 

“(Y/N)..I..” I can’t say anything. My mouth is still open and I know I’m making a fool of myself. This is different. Maybe things are developing too fast. How do I know if I want this? What if I don’t? I choke back the realisation that I think I might, and that’s what confuses me the most. I feel odd, like my whole body is covered in tingles.   
There’s her, and there’s me, and we’re sitting on my apartment floor staring at each other and for what feels like the first time in a while I have absolutely no idea what my next move is. I should be prepared for everything but I’m not. 

Too much thinking will be the death of me.

My lips find hers and then we’re moving slowly together on the floor; her arms are wrapped around my neck and her legs are wrapped around my hips and there’s a gentle creak from a single floorboard every time I press her against the timber.   
Her eyes flicker shut but mine are open; they scan her face, and see.  
She has a soft speckling of freckles and the bridge of her nose has flushed pink, and her eyebrows are messy and her lips are parted and wet from where I kissed her.   
(Y/N) opens her eyes.

“Elliot?” She murmurs. “You’ve stopped. Is everything okay?" 

I blink. I didn’t realise. I was focused on her. She smiles, raises her eyebrows.   
She is a mere child; here she is innocent, in the way she looks at me. How could anyone ever find it in themselves to hurt her? 

She pulls me down and I close my eyes to kiss her, and she squeezes her thighs tighter around me. We move again, pressing together like the elderly, worried we will crush each other’s frames, but (Y/N) is not fragile and I am not worried. This is like the last farewell before battle; the final hours before one of us is ferried away to fight for fading glory. The lingering moments where we pretend we’ll see each other again, forget that someone won’t come home.   
The hero always lives in these, but that’s not how life works.   
The hero dies. Only the legacy is remembered in the end. But we are not heroes in our own lives. What is this? Is our sex emptier and messier than warfare? Is it more tragic or more holy? Are we in love? Could we be? Are we fighting together or each other? Who will die? And which one of us lives to tell the story of the almost-perfect-fairy tale? 

*

Afterwards, (Y/N) checks her tattoo to make sure I haven’t rubbed it off from the friction of our bodies. It’s still there, sitting on her skin, a silent observer in our strange lives.

(Y/N) snuggles into my arm as we sit in my bed, pillows propped against the wall to cradle our backs. She has insisted that we watch a movie together, and since I don’t own a television she’s illegally downloading the link from a site that could infect my laptop with countless viruses.   
I don’t even know what the film is; except, it’s romance, and she seems to be enjoying it. The plot is empty and loose but there are some entertaining moments and (Y/N)’s laughter makes me feel like she’s a different kind of happy. She rests her face on my chest: this is new.  
This time I put my arm around her and listen to her heart beating: it is soft, a gentle lull that ensures me she’s alive.   
Her fingers move gently against my chest and she is warm, a body too small for her soul and a woman too good for me.   
After the movie she takes her side of the bed as if we’re an old married couple and turns to face me.

"You’re the best, Elliot,” (Y/N) offers, “you know that right?”

Am I? What am I the best at? I’m only trying my hardest. Making attempts at small efforts for her.   
I smile, careful not to say anything that she might take the wrong way. I couldn’t have that again.   
(Y/N) bumps our noses together. This feels strange.   
“I’m not the best at anything,” I whisper. My self-doubt is back, tugging at me.   
(Y/N) presses her lips against mine. 

“You’re the best at listening to me. And the best at making an effort. And,” she stares at me, even in the dark. “You’re the best at hiding what you really feel because you’re scared. Just like me.”

She presses her hand against my chest, as if she will be able to hold my pounding heart in her open palm. 

This is the end, now. I’m sure. Will it be over for us if I don’t comply, don’t tell her what she wants to hear?   
Instead (Y/N) moves in to kiss me again. So perhaps it’s not the end. 

“I don’t mind,” she whispers against my mouth. Her eyes grace my lips and I struggle to find it in me to dislike her. She is remarkable indeed.

I act this time, our lips meeting as (Y/N) parts hers and lets mine move against hers.   
Her fingers trace the curve of my jaw and she presses her body flush against me as a half-squeak tumbles from her mouth.   
Heat creeps through me until it feels like there’s a blazing sun contained in my stomach, burning me from the inside out as (Y/N)’s hands bury themselves under the rim of my shorts.   
In the darkness, fuzziness paints itself between my vision and her figure, and her breathing is heavy as her hands move.   
I bite my lip and try to stifle the noises that are creeping over my tongue.   
(Y/N) smashes her lips against mine to spare me from the embarrassment of my vocalisations, her tongue teasing me, as if her hands weren’t enough. My brow knits itself into a frown as the blazing sun makes my stomach tighten and twitch, and I can’t help but moan as her pace increases, my hands balling into fists as I reach for something to hold on to and fall short of everything. (Y/N)’s hands are tender, firm, her fingers soft, and this seems to be more than just a required intimate interaction of our physical soliloquy.   
Her name tumbles from my lips in a jagged groan; now she knows that my pleasure is centred on her, my complete focus.  
The sun blazes harder within me and travels downwards, until my hips are jerking upwards to match her movements.   
(Y/N)’s mouth catches my parted lips and we struggle to kiss, a jumble of harsh breaths and fragmented moans and blaring heat and my sweat and her hand and my hips.  
I grab her face and pull her mouth onto mine, my eyes shut; I don’t need to see this. 

“Elliot,” she murmurs, “what am I good at?”

“What?” She wants to know now? She wants me to tell her what she’s good at when I can barely control the sounds falling from my lips, can’t string words together to make a sentence?   
“You’re…good at…this,” I choke. Is this what she wants to hear? Is this enough?   
(Y/N) seems to know already. She nods. 

“This is all I’m good at,” her voice is a whisper, a fractured declaration. She’s limited herself to being a one-dimensional person; someone whose only talent is to make lonely men believe their orgasms are special, deserved, at the hand of a beautiful yet troubled woman.  
Am I any different from these men? Do I believe for a minute that I’m the only one she’s ever felt like this about? Not really.  
Except in this moment, it’s all I care about: Getting my next high. Whether it’s morphine or sex, I can get both without her. And yet, somehow the latter seems lesser without (Y/N) as my partner. As if I’ll never recover from the wounds she’s painted our bodies with.  
And that’s the way we are ensnared - because the promise of pleasure is more thrilling than the inevitable possibility of collapse.   
How funny. This is my downfall.  
(Y/N) doesn’t say anything, doesn’t speak, only presses her forehead against mine as she works me to my climax.   
It seems almost wrong now; how loud I am, how my voice rings out and how (Y/N) seems content to let me have this victory.  
The warmth from the blazing sun burns in my groin and spreads to my stomach as I am painted with heat, and (Y/N) lets out a long moan. Her hand moves still until my body is cold and my breathing slows.   
We are still pressed together, (Y/N) seeming not to worry that I have soiled her - and myself - and content to lay on her side with our noses touching.   
She strokes my cheek softly, even dare I say, affectionately, and this is the afterglow that I rejoice in. 

“You’re more than this,” I tell her. “You’re good at more than this.” This mess. This emptiness. She’s good at making me feel less alone. She’s good at being a distraction from the ugliness and brutality of reality. She’s good at making me smile. She’s good at making me feel like we share a bond, even if it’s as shallow as sex and half-baited interactions.

(Y/N) looks up at me, and even in the darkness I know her expression. It’s the same one on my face.

“That’s why you’re the best.”


	4. Chapter 4

IV.

She comes in the afternoon and brings a backpack with her.  
She asks if she can share my morphine with me, and after we get high together she orders Chinese takeout from her mobile with a drawl that barely anyone would be able to understand.

She places hot honey chicken on my stomach and eats it off me, and I laugh as she sucks my skin to cool it from the burning batter. We twist noodles in between our forks and feed each other, laughing when she sucks one down the wrong way and chokes for two minutes.   
(Y/N) places a prawn cracker on each of her nipples and smiles wickedly, a silent challenge that I accept without hesitation.  
One press of my tongue to the pink and it’s stuck, and I lift it off her breast easily as she curses and bats me in the hip with her foot, a physical chastising for not engaging in her perverted foreplay.   
She grabs me by the hair and kisses me tenderly, and we eat until we’re full and bloated. 

(Y/N) pulls nail polish out of her bag and does her nails while sitting on my mattress, and I blow them dry for her as she rambles on about something I quickly forget.  
We sing her favourite songs and she slams my pillow into me over and over until I raise my hands in surrender. 

*

(Y/N) is sitting idly on the steps outside my apartment complex when I get back from work, waiting for me for who knows how long.

“Hi,” she smiles. She stands up abruptly, moves to kiss me.

I pull away. This interaction is unexpected. We’ve never been outside together before; and certainly never shared a kiss.

(Y/N) bites her lip, rests a hand on my shoulder. She stands there, almost dejected. There’s something different about her today.   
I can’t place it. There’s no electronic signs of it either. 

“Do you want to come in?” My offer is quiet, but she hears it. She nods, and we trudge up the steps to my door.

When I let her in, she hesitates.  
“Can.. Can I kiss you now?” She murmurs, and before I can say anything she’s embraced me and our lips are against each other. This time she’s tender but desperate, kissing like I am the air she needs to survive.

“Is everything okay?” I whisper; my eyes flicker to and from hers. I feel concerned. There’s something she’s not telling me and I hate not knowing.

(Y/N) looks down. “It’s…my birthday, and I wanted to feel like there was something…or, someone special for me today.”

Her birthday? Her birthday. What day is it? What date is it? How old is she?

“How old are you?" 

She bites her lip. She tells me. She’s younger than I thought. Still, she has an air of maturity to her, and wrapped up in that childlike innocence she almost transcends womanhood and personifies a quality I can’t explain. 

"Happy birthday,” I try, and it comes out almost like a question. 

“Thanks, Elliot,” she smiles. “You’re the only person I have.”

The only one. I am a constant in her life. This is not what I planned for.   
Still, I wrap my arms around her as she leans in and hugs me. She’s sprayed herself with so much perfume it makes me nauseous, but she is warm. 

She shouldn’t be here if it’s her birthday.   
It doesn’t seem right.  
She should be out doing things that normal people do on their birthday. What do normal people do on their birthday? Do they go out?   
Have dinner?

She’s still got her arms wrapped around me as I touch her on the shoulders and she steps down off her toes.

“Don’t you have friends or family to be with?" 

(Y/N) looks at me, and her eyes well with tears. Have I done this?

"No, just you, Elliot.” She wipes her eyes. “I just want to be with you tonight, okay? Please let me stay.”

“Do you…want to go out?” I hope she says no. That would mean we were more than what I thought we were.  
She looks at me, with her big eyes. The eyes I see myself reflected in. 

“Would you be comfortable with that?” She murmurs. “I mean, I know you don’t go out much..” She gestures at my hoodie. “No offence.”

None taken. It’s true. I hate going out. I hate being around people. They’re noisy and irreverent and stupid in large groups. But I don’t want her to have a shitty birthday and maybe it’ll be good for my social anxiety if I go out with her as my support.   
I shrug. 

“We can go out if you want to.”

(Y/N) squeezes my hands and kisses me on the cheek. “Thanks, Elliot!”

Now I’ve done it. I’ve been digging my own grave since I met (Y/N) but now I may have finally unearthed enough dirt to bury myself right at this moment.   
I scoop up my backpack and lock the door behind us.   
We walk side by side across the road and trudge to the shopfront near my apartment. There’s not really anything here but I’m used to walking if we need to.   
(Y/N) looks around, eyeing any potential food places. She frowns. 

“Where do you usually eat?" 

I shrug. Here or there. Whatever I feel like at the time. I don’t enjoy eating out, much less eating anywhere formal or upper-class.  
I have money I can spend if I need to but I don’t like to willingly contribute to the never ending churn of capitalism. 

Am I meant to talk to her? What would I say? 

"Did you get anything for your birthday?" 

(Y/N) looks up. "What? Oh, no.” She waves it off. It hurts her, I know.   
Why do we give gifts? Why don’t we just show each other we care?   
I know the answer. It’s because commercialised goods feel better than human interaction. Because a present doesn’t have its ups and downs. Because you don’t have to put in effort with a gift. You only have to hope they like it. 

After doing a lap, (Y/N) smiles at me. “I think I’m just going to order us pizza,” she shrugs. “We can get it delivered. But first there’s something I want to get.”

(Y/N) drags me to the supermarket and I linger near the magazine rack as she runs around frantically picking up supplies she wants for tonight.

She takes hold of the handle of the plastic bag her groceries are in and swings it in her hand all the way back to my apartment.

I exhale once we’re back in my apartment; here I don’t have to impress anyone, and I’m glad for the simple company. 

(Y/N) is true to her word; she orders pizza and I pay for it; she shouldn’t have to fork out on her own birthday. We sit on my sofa and eat in silence and (Y/N) twirls the cheese around her tongue and ends up with sauce smeared on her cheeks. We finish the whole pizza and (Y/N) wipes her face on her shirt, pulling the fabric up to reveal her stomach.  
She grins at me and after I finish chewing she bolts up like a rocket and goes back to the kitchen to the items contained in the plastic bags.

(Y/N) pulls out a package from the bag; it’s a cake mix.  
It’s 9:30 pm and she’s rummaging through my cupboards looking for mixing bowls and spoons, eggs and oil.  
I’ve never made a cake in my kitchen - I wouldn’t know if I had all the ingredients she wants. 

“Come here and help!” (Y/N) beckons, wiggling her fingers.

“I don’t know how to cook that,” I tell her.

She shrugs. “I’ll teach you. We can do it together.”

Is she sure? What if I ruin it? 

“Elliot! Come here!” (Y/N) laughs. 

Once I am beside her she unpacks all the ingredients and presses a kiss against my lips, with “thank you for dinner.”

She tells me what to do; cracking eggs is the hardest. I drop one on the floor. (Y/N) laughs. We mix the sugar in with the eggs and she dumps the flour in so quickly that it falls over the edge and rises in powdery fumigation that makes us both choke.   
I mix the batter into a gooey consistency while (Y/N) makes the icing.  
(Y/N) dips a finger into the mixture and slides it into her mouth. 

She scoops up a mess and holds it to my lips. I stare at her. 

“What? You’ve never eaten the batter?” She laughs. “Didn’t your mom cook with you?”

My mother. No. My mother didn’t do anything positive with me. At least not that I remember. 

“Come on!” (Y/N) wiggles her finger and I open my mouth. She slides it in and I take the batter; it is sweet, almost sickly.   
(Y/N) puts more batter on her other index finger and wipes it down my cheek on purpose.

“What are you doing?” a smile finds my lips. She’s teasing me now.   
She shoves the cake pan into the oven and sits on my bench with the mixing spoon, her tongue sliding over the plastic as she eats the batter.

I don’t know what to do but it doesn’t feel awkward. It feels like I’m witnessing (Y/N) in her most comfortable state.   
She stares at me, and her eyes seem to be smiling. Her hair is tangled at the back of her neck and her shirt is covered in flour but the light from above the stove seems to bathe her in a yellow glow, painting a halo behind her head.   
Is this a heaven I could get used to? Do I even deserve heaven?   
(Y/N) jumps off the bench and takes my hands, and before I can say no she’s swaying against me, a strange half-dance as she hums. She positions my hand above my head and twirls under it.  
How is it that she is so alive?  
We bump together and she reaches up and swipes the cake batter drying on my cheek, dipping her finger into her mouth. 

When the cake is cooked, (Y/N) tips the pan upside down on a plate and the sponge falls out. It is crooked, wonky, but she doesn’t seem to care. Pink icing is applied and she covers the edges with sprinkles she bought at the store.   
After rummaging in the bag, (Y/N) pulls out a candle and pokes it into the centre of the cake. She holds out her hand and I pass her my lighter.   
The candlelight glows yellow and (Y/N) takes a knife from my top drawer.   
We sit on my bed and she flips the knife in her fingers.

“If I touch the bottom I have to kiss you,” she purrs.

“Okay,” I reply, and she laughs. She cuts into the cake and the whole thing topples over, the flame extinguishing as it touches the pink icing, leaving a smoke mark.   
(Y/N) screams and I can’t help but laugh as she cuts a piece and bites into it. The sponge breaks off into small crumbs and litters my blankets and mattress. 

I take a small handful and taste our creation; it’s nice. It’s the first creative thing we have made together. (Y/N) smiles as we eat together.   
She runs back to the bag on the bench and pulls out party supplies; a bag of party poppers and a party hat. 

I know what’s coming. I also know I have to endure it, at least tonight. (Y/N) positions the party hat on my head and tucks the string under my neck. It’s uncomfortable and I feel stupid, like I’m a circus clown about to be paraded. But it seems to make her happy; she claps and bounces up and down from her position on my bed. 

“Do I look ridiculous?” My voice is unenthusiastic. (Y/N) raises her eyebrows.

“I don’t know about ridiculous, but you do look adorable.” She laughs.

My heart flutters for some unknown reason. (Y/N) pulls out party poppers and fires them, watching as the streamers fall back down onto us. I flinch with every bang, every mini explosion going off.   
(Y/N) picks up the coloured streamers and puts them on top of her head. She makes a face and I smile automatically.  
What is this interaction considered as? 

(Y/N) crawls forward and I lean closer to meet her lips half way. 

She stares at the cake we made and when she looks up again she is crying, an overwhelming vessel of mixed emotions.

“I’m sorry,” she sobs, and I sit there, my head racing with solutions. I have none.

“This is the only birthday celebration I’ve had in a long time,” a choked out explanation, “and I’m spending it with someone who I know cares about me.”

It’s true. I do care. She looks up and her whole face is red. I blink and (Y/N) snuggles closer, and I wrap my arms around her. Her breathing is harsh and she stays against me for a long time.

“Thank you, Elliot." 

She accepts my nod and the cake is discarded, and she takes off the party hat for me. We lay together, untangling the streamers that are caught in her hair and (Y/N) tells me about her childhood and the fantastic birthday stories she has.   
I suppose it’s common to have birthday stories. I don’t. But it’s interesting to listen to them: to hear about the colours and the atmosphere and the people. To dream about times when we were happier. When we knew what happy felt like.

It’s midnight when she finishes talking and we’re still lying on sheets that are covered in crumbs and streamers. 

(Y/N) runs her hands through my hair as she lays looking up at the ceiling.   
"You know I was born at 7:53 am?” She states. “Who the hell could be bothered pushing out a baby at 7:53 am?”  
Then she laughs; an infectious laugh. She has a point. I’m not a morning person either. The more I think about it the funnier it is.   
We’re both laughing and my chest is heaving and it feels like I can’t stop.  
I haven’t felt like this in a long, long time.   
It feels fuzzy. I feel warmth creep into my gut. My body is shaking and (Y/N) rolls over and presses her face into my chest as we laugh together.   
(Y/N) attempts to share a kiss but we’re still laughing and she’s howling with sugary joy.   
And then we’re lying naked and (Y/N) is towering over me and we’re still laughing as she tries to move and we’re half succeeding at giddy sex and half failing because we can’t stop laughing and I’m wondering if this is what bliss feels like.  
(Y/N) leans back in a joyful rock and I reach for her so she doesn’t lose her balance.   
She snorts and this makes my stomach twitch and she’s still laughing while she composes herself and focuses.   
My head falls back against the pillow and there’s a smile still on my face as she thrusts, sending my bed rocking with a squeak as it bumps against the wall. (Y/N) blows hot air through her lips and bites them as her movements become rigid and loose.  
The end is quick and it’s like party poppers; loud and sudden, a burst of colour and a finite release and euphoric for both of us. And this time I don’t flinch.


	5. Chapter 5

V.

(Y/N) runs her fingers through my hair as I rest my chin on her chest. She is lying on her back, and I am resting on top of her with the blankets pulled over our bodies to keep us warm.

“When I was a little girl,” she tells me, “my daddy used to love me. He used to call me his lovebird.” She bites her lips.   
“Lovebirds always come in pairs; you know. I wondered who my other lovebird was.”

I nod, blink wearily. I listen and I don’t mind. These are the facts I can’t hack. 

“When I was a teenager I realised that he thought he was my other lovebird,” she says, and her breath is baited, uneasy, as if I will reject her. “He did…”

“You don’t have to tell me,” I promise her. I understand. Her father was a monster.

“I want to,” she chokes. “I need to hear it too… I… He made me kiss him and…” She exhales harshly.   
“When I said no he held me down, and I was screaming…and nobody came to help me. And then I kept saying no every time so he got pissed off and did that to me -” she gestures to her back and my heart breaks for her.   
She’s crying now, pulling hair out of her mouth and rubbing my cheeks with her thumbs as I stay against her.

“My daddy didn’t love me so I didn’t think anyone else would. But I.. I went out looking for love and I fucked up real bad, Elliot.  
I let everyone fuck me. I thought they would fall in love with me and take me away from my daddy. But nobody ever did. And then my daddy died and I didn’t know what to do because that was all I was used to. And then I couldn’t start fresh because I’d fucked myself over and I had no life. And nobody wants me anyways. And then I was trying to adjust…”  
She wipes her tears away and sniffles. “And then I got my job and it’s a good job and I try really hard there. I do. Because I want to be more than this. I want to be more than what I was." 

She meets my eyes. "And then you happened.”

Her tone is accusatory; as if I am the reason her life was ruined. 

“Why didn’t you just fuck me, Elliot?” (Y/N) is weeping now. “Why did you have to be different? I only wanted to fuck you and get it over and done with. Now look at me -” she waves her hands again. “Who am I now?”

Good question. I barely know the answer.   
She’s scared. She’s upset. I press my lips against her chest and she cups my chin in her hands again.

“I’m sorry,” escapes my mouth. Is this what she wants? “I’m sorry I’m different.”

“I want you to be different, Elliot,” (Y/N) stammers. “You’re the only person who’s ever cared about me.”  
She twists short strands of my hair in between her fingers. “When I’m with you I don’t think about my daddy.”

“What else did he do to you?” I have to make sure. 

(Y/N) tells me. Tells me everything her father did to her. It is horrendous. It’s difficult to listen to, even for me. She describes her abuse with such vivid detail, leaves no crime unmentioned. She shows me her scarlet scars from where she tried to kill herself and failed. She tells me about the side effects her Prazosin has but explains the nightmares she has without them. She tells me about every time she screamed for help and nobody came to rescue her. She’s never had a proper childhood. That’s why she carries it with her, a shattered souvenir that she’s never seen before it broke.   
She is so brave. After everything, she is still here, kicking and screaming and fighting for every breath of air that she deserves.   
In the world of kill-or-be-killed, she is a lion. Strong, fierce, wild, struggling with every fibre of her being constantly, for her right to live. Yet even as (Y/N) tells me all of this, she seems to not be aware of how incredibly resilient she is.   
Do lions know they are lions?

*

I wake to the smell of food wafting across my apartment. (Y/N) is a blur as my eyes open; she’s wearing only a loose shirt that hangs at her hips as she dances through my kitchen cooking something. It smells better than every take-out food place I’ve ever been to. Flipper agrees; she’s whining, staring up at (Y/N).   
I sit up: I shouldn’t stay. The clock reads 6:30am and I realise (Y/N)’s intentions are to make me breakfast before work.   
She notices I’m awake and smiles; shrugs.

“I thought you’d be hungry?”

She’s right. My stomach feels empty and its complaints come in the form of low grumbles. 

(Y/N) finishes scraping whatever she’s being cooking out of a pan and onto a plate, and I wait to see what she will do.

She brings me a plate and her creation seems to be an enormous pancake with dollops of yoghurt and adorned with strawberry pieces and blueberries. 

“My mom taught me how to make these,” she explains. “Tell me what you think.”

I like it. It’s nice. Sweet, but the perfect combination of healthy and indulgent. That’s something (Y/N) is good at; cooking.   
I don’t each much; it’s very filling, and what I leave (Y/N) wastes no time scooping into her mouth.   
She closes her eyes to chew; she’s thinking about her mother, about all the memories they shared before she died.

“You’re a good cook,” I offer her. She stares at me, as if nobody’s ever told her.   
“You’re beautiful,” falls from my mouth and I swallow. I wasn’t meant to say that and now there’s dread settling at the pit of my stomach. 

(Y/N) blinks. She smiles gently and kneels in front of me, sitting on her thighs. My heart is pounding. She’s beautiful now, and she’s good at more than just what she thinks she is. But I want to be good at it, too. I want to know I am for sure.  
My hands are trembling as one of them finds her thigh and lingers. (Y/N) stares at me and sucks her bottom lip into her mouth; she’s aware of what I’m trying to do and I’m glad because I don’t want to explain it. She nods and my hand moves slowly, sliding up and down her flesh and squeezing gently.   
(Y/N) parts her thighs and her breathing drops until I can hear it coming out in harsh drawls.   
She takes my hand and guides it gently upwards, and my eyes settle on her face. My aptitude for reading people comes in handy now as her eyes flicker shut and a deep blush paints itself across her cheeks.   
My stomach twists itself into knots as my fingers shake, find her, linger.   
My head is spinning with what I think I’m supposed to do, what I should be doing, but my stomach is stirring with the choices in front of me. I’m desperately nervous, swallowing back my doubts.   
(Y/N) lets out a pant as I start to rub, and I can see a warm pink spread over her whole body in front of me, her arteries doing their job as her heart pumps overtime.   
Her mouth falls open and I know there are shivers creeping down her spine because there are shivers creeping down my spine as I keep my hand in between her thighs.   
There’s a strange sense of excitement pooling within my stomach as (Y/N) moans and twitches.   
She exhales sharply, and her head rolls backwards as her face tightens.   
Her hands find mine and guide my fingers; my stomach lurches as arousal paints itself on my face; she bites her lip and lets a guttural growl escape her mouth. My fingertips circle her and I can feel her desire pooling, leaking as her thighs separate for me, her legs spread as she holds herself up, even though her foundations are shaking.

(Y/N) stammers my name in a choked-out babble and I bite my cheeks and slide my hand upwards. She is warm and my breath hitches in my throat as (Y/N) curses loudly and pushes down against my touch. Her face has flushed pink and I can feel my ears warming as I move gently, my thumb still rubbing as she bends against my touch. Her hair is sticking to her face as sweat beads on her forehead and slides down her face. 

She is beautiful and I can’t stop staring at her, seeing her reactions to my touch. I swallow harshly and keep going, keep my eyes fixed on her face. I don’t want to miss anything about this; every time her eyelids twitch, every lip-bite, swallow, moan, the way she frowns and pants and shakes. 

I push gently and (Y/N) lets out a cry; her stomach is twitching and she sways on her knees back and forth gently. She opens her eyes and gasps as she shuffles closer towards me, until she’s straddling me on the bed and has her arms wrapped around my neck; one hand grasps for my hair.  
She hides her face in my shoulder and I grab both of her thighs with my hands and hold her steady. She’s still panting jaggedly when my index finger finds her again and works with the pressure of my thumb.   
(Y/N) squeezes her face into my shoulder and lets out a long moan, her whole body heaving as she rolls her hips onto my fingers.   
My other hand brushes her breast through the loose shirt and I can feel her swollen nipples. Sweat rolls off her body, adding to the dampness of her discharge on my sheets.

“Don’t stop,” she begs, and now every press of my fingers elicits a choked whimper or a vocalisation as she trembles against me. 

Now my power is physical too; the way I can get her body to move, make her face reveal everything I want to know, that I am good at this. 

(Y/N) chokes out my name, over and over between moans and gasps and swallows, her hands clawing at my back as her whole body shakes and rocks and buckles. 

We are hallowed tombs, bleeding masterpieces, ripped at every edge and unfinished; wet paint, able to be smeared and touched and ruined: temples built on wonky foundations and brought to our decimation. 

(Y/N) halts as she cries out; a harsh chord of unrestrained breathlessness and hedonistic fruition. This is me. This is her. This is the way we undo ourselves; with messy, shaking fingers and open mouths and each other’s names on our lips as we pray to gods we don’t believe in to ask for things we can’t want and don’t deserve to have.

*

Recently every day I find myself counting down the minutes: the time between when my shift finishes and when my time with (Y/N) starts; she comes every three days, sometimes more often, sometimes less often.   
Always to my apartment - and always on the front steps or sitting at my door. 

She is patient outside, rosy smiles and gentle kisses and soft eyes. She is impatient inside, taking whatever she wants from me with animalistic growls and moans, empty belly and wicked claws, a smirk on her jowls.   
I roll over and expose my stomach and flank for her, an unsheathed beast in submission.

What monsters are we? With hungry lips and eerie cries, devouring each other; only to slip back to humanity at night, once our bodies have swollen and convulsed and possessed each other and we wake up with wounds that are more glorious than cathedral windows.  
We are sinners by day, worshippers by night, glorifying each other’s bodies, and every morning (Y/N) wakes with the sunlight painting a halo around her locks and I am a mortal basking in the Eden of her body and the bliss of domesticity.

(Y/N) asks me silly questions like: what galaxy matches my aesthetic? If I were a lubricant what flavour would I be? If I had to choose between world peace or saving the bees what would my decision be? Would I rather fight five eight year olds or eight five year olds? Would I rather ejaculate cereal or urinate milk?   
I find questions like these superfluous; yet, still they amuse me. (Y/N)’s answers amuse me more - she takes them too seriously, like she has to beat me at this competition.

Her presence makes me smile - almost as if when I’m with her I don’t think about work or hacking or my depression or my childhood; there’s just her and I and the minutes we share, and every day we’re together keeps me hankering for more.  
Every time she leaves I wonder how long this can go on and pretend like we are infinite so I don’t have to think about the possibilities.

I have come to terms with my affections now. I am not a comfortable party all the time, but I try for her.  
She lays back and I kiss her neck slowly, drag my lips against her clavicles, encircle plump scarlet stains with my tongue. I hate waiting, but I rejoice in taking time. Like all things, society is too hasty, grappling always for everything now.   
These fleeting moments of lingering reverie are comforting. (Y/N) lets me kiss her stomach, and it is here that I feel excitement pool, as I take in every bump of her flesh. She is so externally human, with goose-bumps and scars and stretch marks painting themselves like lightning across her hips and thighs, white scars of growth, and stray hairs that stick out in strange directions and litter her body like a dusting of softness.   
She is hot and wet and trembling, surging with blood and want and so incredulously alive.   
How can I ever compete?   
It is only as she warms to my touch and paints her mouth with my name that I know I don’t have to. 

*

I’ve lost track of how many days (Y/N) has been here. We met months ago, and ever since she’s been a constant routine. Never leaving me, never giving up. Her strength is endurable; she picks up her feathers from the ground and glues them to my body, making us both whole again. 

It is no longer silently that we tangle together, but rather, in the expanse of our proximity, our moans bridge the gap between our disconnection. I know her name in my climaxes, and she knows mine in hers.   
(Y/N)’s fingers find every curve of my body and mine every dip of hers, a correlation of wet affection and bursting heat as we sew our bodies together and rip them open every morning when she leaves. 

This is something I’ve never experienced before, at least not in this magnitude.  
I’ve been so expectant that (Y/N) will disappear that I haven’t been paying attention to anything else in my monotonous existence. My reluctance to let go of her has rendered me exposed to everything she pours into me - my hypersensitivity is taken up by every word she speaks to me.

She is exquisite; I used to think she was human. Now I no longer know. But she is some kind of creature - a being made of exploding nebulae and devastating meteors.   
I am the planet she has shaken, and I no longer know how to rebuild myself.   
My organs burn pink, and every time I am away from her I ache. 

What is happening to me? What has happened to me?

I didn’t know who I was before but now I’m even more lost, struggling to see myself as anything individually.   
This is dangerous. 

Is this love? Is this what it could be? Is it what I want?


	6. Chapter 6

VI.

“I have to tell you something,” I swallow as (Y/N) lays beside me, our legs tangled and her palm pressed against my chest. “I have to be honest.” If this is love, I have to show her I can tell the truth. I have to let her trust me.

(Y/N) sniffs, rests her chin on her folded arms. “Are you sick of me, El?” she murmurs. “Getting too tired of me coming here?”

I shake my head. Everything in my body is screaming at me not to tell her. To keep it a secret. She doesn’t have to know. It won’t change anything.

I stare at her, bite my cheeks. “When you first started coming here, I.. I wanted to know about you so -” don’t do it. Don’t do it. Don’t do it. Don’t do it. Don’t do it. Don’t do it. Don’t “- I hacked you and found out everything I needed to know.”

(Y/N) frowns. “What?!” She blinks. Fuck. “What do you mean you hacked me? Can you even do that? Is that even legal?”

I hacked her. Yes, I can do it. No, it’s illegal. 

“I’m a tech,” I have to explain, “this is what I do.”

“Techies don’t hack people they’re fucking,” (Y/N) spits. Venom. “What do you mean you found out everything?”

I inhale. I exhale. I prepare myself for what is to come. 

“I found out your name, that you worked for an investment company and you’d been employee of the month four times, you went to Cuba last year. You’re an only child and your father died three years ago. You have a cat and you take Prazosin because you suffer from PTSD and you were a great - and I mean great - student at school. That’s what I found out.”

“Elliot, you know that because I told you,” (Y/N) stares at me. 

“No,” I shake my head. “I know that because I have a problem. I hacked you and then pretended I didn’t know when you told me.”

(Y/N) blinks, sits up on her thighs. “Why are you telling me this?”

“Because I want to be honest,” I stammer.

“Was nothing else honest before this?" 

She’s taking it the wrong way. I can’t blame her. This mess is my fault.

"Answer me, Elliot! Was this whole thing a lie? Every time you laughed at my jokes and paid attention to me and comforted me and let me tell you about my life? Was it fake?”

“No,” I try. “I made a mistake -”

“What was your mistake?!” The verdict. “That you fucked me and got involved or just that you fucked me? Or was every time you cried out my name a lie too?”

How can I say anything? She’s twisting my words, turning me into a monster. I never wanted this. I never asked for it. Tell me what to do!

She’s sobbing, keeled over on the bed, her hands covering her eyes.   
“I thought you were genuine! I thought we had something!”

“This doesn’t change anything!” I growl. I can feel the rage bubbling at the base of my stomach, ready to spew out in a fit of irate destruction. 

“How can I possibly believe you?” (Y/N) meets my eyes. “How can I trust you, now?”

“Because I…” I can’t say it. My stomach flips and I feel nauseous. How can I tell her? Admitting this to her before I’ve finally accepted it myself. “I…”

(Y/N) exhales, and I know she is more disappointed in me than angry, and I don’t know if that’s worse or not. She slides off my bed without a word and collects her belongings, scooping up clothes and tossing them into her backpack.

“Are you taking some time to think about it?” I try. She’ll get over it, I know. She has nobody else to go to.

“Elliot, I don’t wanna see you again.” The words tumble from her mouth and I feel my soul crumbling within me. She’s not serious is she? After everything we’ve been through together? 

“(Y/N)! (Y/N)! Wait!” This can’t be it! This can’t be happening! 

(Y/N) pauses at my doorway, sways back and forth while tears stream down her cheeks. “You know what? You really had me fooled, Elliot. I don’t know whether you’re an arsehole or just a very sick man. Best of luck to ya." 

And then she’s gone. That simply.  
How effortlessly they leave us.

To be honest, I thought this option would have played out differently. I imagined she’d scream at me and I’d scream back. Perhaps she’d have grabbed something from my apartment and smashed it into tiny, irreparable pieces. I thought she would cry more. Maybe she’d have hit me. Maybe afterwards she’d have forgiven me and we’d have made up and carried on.   
But now it seems like all of my scenarios are incorrect. There is no anger left in me. Only sorrow and numbness as I struggle to feel like this mess is anyone’s fault. We were doomed from the start and now our actions have come to fruition.   
Guilt seeps in through the fabric of my clothes and covers me like ocean water, cold and merciless, tugging at me until I give up the willpower to breathe and succumb to the dark certainty of drowning.

This love has turned to ash and I’ve enough to bury my bones with it.

*

My stomach twitches as the minutes tick down; three days, three days. Will (Y/N) come back tonight? My hands are shaking and I’m not sure if it’s from nerves or the morphine I took to numb the overwhelming surge of emotion.   
I had expected to see her at my doorstep when I got home from my shift at Allsafe but I know that’s just my intrinsic selfish humanity clawing at me. 

The lights aren’t even on in my apartment. The only sign of life is my chest rising and falling and Qwerty swimming mindlessly around the bowl; Flipper’s snoring, draped across my feet, and this is what I’m left with. My apartment with paint peeling off the walls and creaky floorboards, two souls oblivious to my demise and the cold wind brushing my arms through the window I left open, my form just another shadow in the darkness.   
Not the sunlight, not the melody of a song I have secretly come to love, not bubble baths or cake mix or temporary tattoos or dumb would-you-rathers or bubbling laughter or slow lips or trembling hands or this and this and this and this and this and -  
Just me. Alone.   
All I’ll ever be. 

*

The first morning of knowing is the hardest, knowing she’s not there: when I open my eyes and the first blinks of focus are on the empty sheets beside me. The sheets are cold, vacant of human warmth, almost like she was here and then she left; reminiscent of every spontaneous rendezvous I ever had before (Y/N) made it mean something.   
My bones are heavy and my muscles ache, and it seems that it takes all my effort to get out of bed and face the day.   
Flipper, loyal, lays at my feet. She knows not of the void swallowing me from the inside out. I long to be her; to live an idle life free from the inconveniences of emotion and responsibility, to be content to chase my own tail.   
It’s hard to walk down the street, to sit near a woman on the train, catch someone wearing similar perfume. Everything that reminds me of her. Even Buzzfeed and takeout and braided hair makes me feel like I’ve been stabbed and am bleeding out in my chair, confined to my cubicle while I spill out from every burst suture, and everyone else carries out without noticing.  
Is this the evil of emotion? To rage an internal battle with yourself and pretend like you’re fine when internally you’re urging to kick and scream and cry and bleed? 

Angela sits idly on my desk at lunchtime and spoons honey chicken into her mouth; last night’s leftovers, just like me.  
I excuse myself quickly and only when I’m sitting in the toilet cubicle do I allow the tears to come.   
I feel like a colander trying to hold an ocean; my body punctured and leaking and unable to satisfy the waves of grief pulling me under. My hand presses over my mouth to quieten my sobs; I can’t get her out of my head every time I shut my eyes she’s there what do I do oh please please please please please please please oh god.   
The bathroom is empty - cold tiles and sparse walls - save for me, and I wonder if I really am alive. How can I consider myself as living? I breathe, but at what cost?   
Being numb has it’s downfalls, but I prefer it to this - whatever this is.   
I end up choking on my own breathing and sitting alone for the whole duration of my break so I don’t have to see anybody while my face is red.  
Somebody comes in but they don’t take any notice of my locked cubicle and I wouldn’t have answered even if they had’ve seemed concerned.

*

Today is Tuesday. It’s been a whole week since (Y/N) left. The world is again dull and boring, full of mindless drones who monotonously follow the same routine every day to contribute to the never ending spew of capitalism. I have relapsed into one of them. See me, Elliot Alderson, and laugh at what I have become: messy, uncouth.   
There are dishes piled and overflowing in my sink, towels sprawled on my bathroom floor, my sheets damp and unmade; my hands every night’s painful momentary distraction, my morphine is littered all over my table in untaken lines and the redness under my eyes remains. My brain is fuzzy, spaced out. I can’t focus on anything for too long; I am a delinquent washed up on a nameless beach with nothing to my name except my throbbing organs and the sand caked onto my lips threatening to choke me with every accidental breath.  
Maybe tonight will be the night I overdose. Maybe it will be tomorrow night, or the night after, or the night after.   
(Y/N) should be the bruised wash-up that I crawl over to, instead she’s the captain that stayed behind with the sinking ship, tears on her cheeks as she sealed her own fate by the choices she made to sacrifice everything we had.


	7. Chapter 7

VII.

(Y/N) hasn’t messaged anyone about me, hasn’t blogged about it or posted any photos. I am a smudge in the bottom corner of her life; no more than a past experience, a blurry memory. Her search history does not involve any words relevant to love or relationships or getting over me. Perhaps she’s doing fine. Of course, I know she’s not. (Y/N) hasn’t been out in five days - she’s avoiding human contact like me. She’s been taking those stupid quizzes again; back to hunting who she should be. 

I have fourteen missed calls from Angela. Shit. She must have noticed my absence. I’ve gotta give it to her, she’s persistent. But she’s not the woman I want to talk to right now.   
I know, I know: I have (Y/N)’s number. But I wouldn’t call her. I can’t bring myself to do it. What if she really is doing just fine without me? I’d just be a nuisance, a bother, a mistake she doesn’t want to revisit.   
If only to listen to her voice again, I find myself dialling her number and praying for voicemail, hanging up as soon as her message finishes.

"Hi, this is (Y/N)! Awkward for you having to leave this message! Tell me all the bad things you think about me at night and I’ll get back to ya as soon as I can!" 

Beeeeeppp.

(Y/N), I think about you at night. I think about you every day. I think about your eyes and your eyelashes and your tangled hair and your lips against mine and your mouth on my flesh and your neck and the dip below your throat and the curve of your stomach and your fingers and the dimples at the base of your spine and your thighs and your legs and the way they tangled with mine in the morning and how we pried the sheets off our bodies and the way you made me laugh and made me look forward to something and how you made life colourful for a few hours and the way I laughed when I was with you and how every tender kiss was healing and every orgasm was holy and every minute of loving you was all I ever wanted. 

But I can never say these things. I can only whisper them to myself in the dark, until they too, become nothing but shadows. 

*

The whole world is icy grey and cold and dull and I’m numb from morphine wishing I could block out the hurt and the hatred for myself.  
I’ve been crying every night now and it’s getting worse. I’ve been avoiding everything, everyone, just in case anything reminds me of her.  
I never told her how I feel and now I’m regretting every single time when I had the opportunity and didn’t take it. I’m a coward and a fool.

(Y/N) is no more a human woman. She is a file on my computer, data burnt onto a cd and contained in amongst all my other files, all my other hacks, discoveries, and labelled as her favourite band.

Her body is no longer part of my body; we sought to be connected and are now suffering from our own misalignment.   
My knuckles are bruised and bloody from the victory of the plaster over my flesh and every time I wince from the pain I am reminded of (Y/N) and every emotion I felt when I was with her:  
Every gaslight kiss, midnight-moment wreckage, every renegade-fuck-truck stop-orgasm and teenage giggle we shared as if we deserved it; every bruise and mark and scratch and goose bump and hickey on my chest and neck and back and thighs and hips; every time she stained my flesh purple with jagged, wild, bloody teeth is still here. Still here and I want it gone. Still here and I want her back.   
Has desire ever felt this wrong?   
Has loss ever felt this necessary?

I’m lying on my bed alone and every dumb Air Supply song I ever heard overplayed on the radio is playing on repeat in my head, and this time I can’t stop it. Can’t change it or make it go away.   
This is my lack of power manifesting itself within me, making me feel powerless in my own apartment, in my own body, my own mind. This is my lack of power telling me the only truth I needed since I met (Y/N) and decided she was worth a minute of my time.  
This is my lack of power forcing me to retake control of my life by saving all her data onto a technological file and storing it away where I never have to open it again or revisit the pain and the grief and the unbearable infinity of falling for someone.

This is the last night I will cry until I fall asleep; I repeat it over and over until I believe it, until I’m too busy remembering to be lonely and miserable and ready to give up. Until I am back to the way I was before (Y/N) walked through my door and tore me inside out. 

*

I’m staring at my morphine trail when it happens; wishing my brain would just blank until tomorrow, spare me from the agony of going to bed alone and waiting for sleep’s cold embrace. 

There’s a knock at my door, quiet but sudden, and my heart surges and sinks simultaneously.  
I go to it.

When I pull the door open, a familiar face greets me. It is (Y/N).  
She’s back. She’s back. She’s back. She’s come back to me and she’s standing in my doorway. Shit.   
Either I’m the luckiest person alive or the most fucked I’ve ever been.  
But regardless, it’s still (Y/N).

She looks like she did when I saw her for the very first time; remember how I said I barely remember the night we met? I lied. It looked a lot like this. She’s staring at me with her big eyes, her lips are bitten up and quivering and her hair is knotted, a tangle of thorns. She’s wearing the same outfit except it hasn’t been ironed and she’s sprayed so much perfume on I wonder if she’s trying to make up for her lack of self-confidence as she cowers in my doorway.

"Elliot,” she whispers, and suddenly my name is the holiest it’s ever been.

I open the door, and (Y/N) hesitates. She steps in.  
I have to tell her. I have to. She has to know. Does she know already? Surely.

“I’m in love with you,” I stammer, loud and clear. 

(Y/N) blinks. She’s still standing in front of me, her face blank. She’s taking it in and I want to reach out and take her hands and hold them and kiss her. Would she let me?   
She is light condensed into a human woman and she’s burning so brightly. She’s standing in front of me and her light is the one at the end of my tunnel.   
I’m terrified and excited all at once and I can feel my whole body heating up.

“Did you hear me?” I swallow. “I said I’m in love with you.”

(Y/N) smiles weakly, her eyes catching the floor. She steps forward and she’s close enough to kiss. Her eyes meet mine and she exhales.  
It would be so easy just to pull her close and kiss her with everything I have; show her that every organ in my body is keeping me alive to be here for her, that every heartbeat, every butterfly in my stomach, every goose bump, every hair standing up on the back of my neck, every time I blush and cry and yell and come is for her, completely and utterly. 

There is nothing else left for me.  
Nothing else I want but (Y/N). 

And now her power is physical once again as she stands in front of me, lingering between yes and no, love or neglect, the bad option or the smart one. 

The decision is hers to choose.

And mine to endure.

(Y/N) picks up my hands, takes my fingers in hers and brushes her fingertips over my scarlet flesh, still swollen. 

“Now,” she murmurs, and her voice is the only thing keeping me from crumbling to my knees. “What have you done to yourself?”

We linger here together, my hand in hers, our bodies almost flush, in surreal, agonising inexhaustible silence, and in this moment we are infinite and our love becomes intangible. 

And kissing her would be oh so easy.


End file.
